Does anyone have an idea of how much data can be practically stored in
memcached? We are looking at upwards of several millions rows of small
data (store/product/price).
Are we better off with an in-memory database instead?
Your thoughts?
You should not "store" anything in memcached. From Wikipedia:
"A cache is a component that improves performance by transparently
storing data such that future requests for that data can be served
faster. The data that is stored within a cache might be values that have
been computed earlier or duplicates of original values that are stored
elsewhere. If requested data is contained in the cache (cache hit), this
request can be served by simply reading the cache, which is comparably
faster. Otherwise (cache miss), the data has to be recomputed or fetched
from its original storage location, which is comparably slower."
The key terms in there are "duplicates of original values that are
stored elsewhere" and "(cache miss), the data has to be recomputed or
fetched from its original storage location".
As for how much data can be cached, as much as you have free memory for.
Brian.
